Stabenow, Dana - Liam Campbell 04 - Better To Rest

by Better To Rest(lit)

  So they went. Bob said they were nuts and he refused to go with them, but he loaned her his bibs and boots and they drove straight from the airstrip to Icky and then up the trail to the little airstrip the CCCers had put in the summer of 38, back when they were surveying the refuge. It wasnt a long hike after that, and what with all the lights it was bright as day out so they couldnt get lost. The glacier wasnt that hard to climb, maybe because the snow was piled so high along the sides and it was firm enough not to go through when they walked on it.

  They got to the wreckage about five in the morning, by his watch. Some of it was still smoking. A lot of it had already slid into the crevasse, the edge melted by the heat of the pieces of the plane. There were some body parts on the snow, and a headless body sitting in the front part of the plane. The smell was awful. They were both horrified, and in a hurry to get away from it, when she stumbled over a charred leather bag. It was heavy, and she hurt her foot. It made him curious, so he opened it. And that was when they found the coins.

  “There were hundreds of them, Eric said, a faraway look in his eyes. “Gold coins, sewn into individual pockets in long strips folded over on each other. It was like... treasure. Wed found it; it was ours.

  So theyd hauled the coins down the glacier and back to Newenham. Eric was all for selling them for the weight of the gold; it would be easy enough in Alaska. Lydia knew something about coins, though, and she made him wait while she wrote letters and waited for replies. It took most of six months, by which time the Japanese had invaded Attu and Kiska, and Alaska was really and truly at war. He joined the army and left Lydia and the gold coins behind. When he got back, four years later, she had married Stanley Tompkins the month after Eric had left, and already had one kid.

  “I always wondered about Betsy, Eric said. He gave Moses a covert look. “I made it my business to look up her birthday. The time was about right. I figured then, I owed it to Lydia to leave her and the coins alone. And then I met Mary, and I did good for myself and for her, and, well, I didnt think about those damn coins anymore.

  You were just married and starting a family, Liam thought. The entire world was recovering from the war. Sure, you didnt think about the coins.

  “The years went by, good years, Eric said. “And then Mary died. And my life was over.

  Or thats what hed thought, until Lydia came knocking at his door three months after theyd put Mary into the ground. Stan Sr. had been dead four years by then, of course. She was lonely, she said. She knew he was, too. Seemed foolish to be lonely when they lived right down the road from each other, and had known each other for so long, and at one time so well.

  For four months everything was wonderful. The overwhelming ache of loneliness receded, and Lydia astonished Eric by showing him that he was still interested in sex. They left Newenham separately and met in Anchorage for the Fourth of July holiday; she stowed away on the Mary M. and they motored down to Chichagof Cape and back one sunny July week; they went over to Egegik to his grandmothers fish camp and skinny-dipped in the lagoon like they were kids again. It was a halcyon four months.

  And then he had to go and ruin things by proposing. She wouldnt marry him. She didnt want to marry again, not after Stan.

  That was when he realized that Lydia really had loved Stan, that she had most probably never loved him. That was when he realized that Betsy probably was Stans child, after all. That was when he realized that Lydia hadnt waited even a month after hed joined up before she slept with another man.

  He still loved her, but sneaking around, as fun as it had been in the beginning, didnt look attractive in the long term. Marriage or nothing, he said. Nothing, she said.

  “That was when you went on the toot, Moses said. “We all thought it was some kind of delayed reaction from Mary dying.

  Drunk seemed to be the easiest way to get through it, so Eric did his best to drink the town dry. Even that wasnt enough.

  Then they found the wreck of the C-47. And the arm. And the gold coin. The memory of the night the plane had crashed and he and Lydia had hiked up the glacier returned full-force. Hed forgotten it, until he saw the coin.

  He went to her house and told her. Maybe we should tell, she said. No, he said. He was a town councilman, a city father; he had the respect of everyone in Newenham. You did until you fell down a bottle, she said. He slapped her. She slapped him back, and called him names. He grabbed her and shook her, and she fought and pulled away and tripped and fell against the counter. He was just trying to calm her down, trying to talk some sense into her. And then she was dead.

  “Why did she want to tell about the gold? Liam said.

  Eric looked at Moses. “You know what she was like. A good woman, a righteous woman. She said we stole that gold. She said shed sold the coins to a collector Outside to finance Stans first seiner. She said her family was rich because of that gold, and that her children were ruined because of it. I think she thought if we told that it would reverse things somehow. I dont know how. It wasnt like we could give it back. We never knew who it belonged to in the first place, and Lydia said it was illegal for people to own gold back then so wed never be able to find out.

  “What about Karen? Moses said.

  Eric hung his head. “She knew about the gold. Shed heard her mother talking to her father when she was little. All she heard was that her mother and me had found some gold when we were kids, and she decided there had to be some left, and that I knew where it was. She wanted some, and she called me to meet her at her mothers house.

  “And you strangled her.

  “She said such hateful things, things about her mother. Things about how her mother slept around with a hundred men and how I shouldnt think I was anything special. And then she got into details. Things about how when she was short of cash Lydia was too busy spending money on her men to give her daughter any. How Lydia had written her a check for five thousand and said that was the last of it. Then she started in again on the men, and what shed seen Lydia and Stan Sr. doing when she was a kid. And there we were, standing in the kitchen of her own mother, the woman I loved.

  The woman you murdered, Liam thought.

  “I was trying to rip her tongue out, tell you the truth. There was no bearing it. She had a mouth on her, that girl. He clasped tough, stringy hands together on the table. “She just wouldnt shut up. So I shut her up.

  The three men sat in silence. Outside, snow was falling softly in big fat flakes. Snow had a quality of hush like no other, Liam thought, a muting, calming influence. Peace.

  “How did you know we flew up to Anchorage last night?

  “What? Moses said.

  Eric looked sheepish. “Oh, hell. I was in the bar when Wy called Bill to come stay with her boy. I figured itd be easy enough to take a shot at you on the way home. I know the flight path for the approach into the Mad Trapper; I live right under it. I took the skiff across the river and... He shrugged and dropped his head.

  Moses shot to his feet and began slapping Erics head, open-palmed slaps with the full force of his arm behind them. “You old fuck! You were shooting at my granddaughter! He started slapping with both hands. “Get on your feet! Get up! Get up, goddamn it, so I can take a decent shot at you!

  Eric cringed away.

  “Goddamn you, Cal, weve known each other since high school! What the hell did you think you were doing?

  “Moses. Moses. Moses! Liam came around the table and pulled Moses away. “Knock it off. Just calm down, now.

  Moses backed down, fuming.

  Perfect peace, all right.

  “You called him Cal, Liam said.

  “Its his name, Moses snapped. “Calvin Eric. We called him Silent Cal in school, when we were studying Coolidge.

  The SC on Lydias calendar. Silent Cal.

  “Calvin Eric Mollberg, Im arresting you for the murders of Lydia Tompkins and Karen Tompkins. You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to an attorney....

  TWENTY

  “Sad, w
as Wys verdict.

  “Pitiful, Liam said. “You know what I hate?

  They were lying in Wys bed, the infamous twin-size bed that was too short for Liam on both ends and too narrow for both of them to sleep in side by side. It wasnt a problem for either of them at the moment, but Wy had a feeling it was right around the corner. “What do you hate?

  “I hate stupidity. I hate incompetence. I hate ignorance, and ineptitude, and all those other words that begin with I that denote idiocy. For crissake, Wy. The mans seventy-five years old, hes lived a mostly blameless life, he was a good husband, a good father, a goddamn pillar of his community. Now he gets to spend whats left of his life locked up with a bunch of drug dealers and child molesters and, of course, his fellow murderers. I mean, Jesus! Can you see him in a cell with Gheen?

  She tucked herself more securely into the curve of his body. “I dont think theyre going to put anybody in with a serial killer, Liam. Although she had liked Lydia a lot and it wouldnt have hurt her feelings if the Alaska Department of Corrections in their infinite wisdom had decided that Gheen and Eric Mollberg were destined as cellmates.

  “And Lydia. Goddamn it. I liked her. Hell, I think I was halfway in love with her. I told you about her beaning Harvey with the jar of tomatoes, didnt I?

  “About five times. And they were sun-dried tomatoes.

  “She was a great old gal. She flirted with me. Seventy-four and the juices were still running. And come to find out shes who she is because shes a grave robber.

  Wy had known Lydia some, enough that Lydia had offered her a place in the Literary Ladies book club, but Wys job kept her in the air so much she would have missed meetings the entire summer. She had declined, but every now and then shed run into Lydia at the post office and theyd trade titles. “I liked her.

  “Everybody liked her. A lot of people loved her. Some downright lusted after her, even after she was a grandmother, too. Doesnt mean what she did was right.

  Wy had spent more time in the Bush than Liam had. “Someone would have come along and taken it.

  “Human nature, I know, I

  “No, Liam. Wy squinched around until she was facing him, her butt hanging precariously over the edge of the bed. “Nothing ever goes to waste in the Bush. She had a good use for it; she bought her husband a boat. That gold was like the Blazo cans they beat flat into shingles, and the fifty-five-gallon drums they turn into stoves. It was like when a SeaLand cargo ship hits a storm and washes everything overboard and it all floats up on shore. Finders keepers. Its the law of the land.

  “She was saying they should tell at the end. She must have known it was thieving when she did it if it came home to roost sixty years later.

  “You think shed been agonizing over it all these years, wallowing in her own guilt?

  Liam thought of some of the interviews he and Diana Prince had done. “No.

  “She lived her life, right through up until the end. I think, Wy said, propping herself up on an elbow, “I think when she heard about the plane being found and the arm and the coin, that maybe she thought it was time, that was all. It wasnt an attack of conscience. She tapped his chest. “But Eric Mollberg heard it that way because he was feeling guilty. He was happy to shuffle off the burden of the coins to her in the first place, happy to join the army and go off to war. She was sixteen, Liam. She wasnt a criminal mastermind; she was just an opportunist, like everyone else who lives in the Alaskan Bush, like everyone needs to be to survive.

  She smiled down at him, and in a lightning move he reversed their positions. “Ill make you a deal.

  “State your terms.

  “I wont take the job in Anchorage if you get us a bigger bed.

  She flushed a faint, rosy pink. “Do you mean it, Liam?

  “I emphasize the one word in that sentence that means the most: bigger.

  “I dont want you to stay in Newenham for me, Liam, or for Tim. I want you to stay here because you want to stay here.

  “Not king-size, thatd be too big, Id never find you.

  “I mean it, Liam. I dont want to live my life having to be grateful to you because you stayed with me the second time around.

  “A double isnt big enough. My feet would be bound to stick out over the edge, and I hate that.

  “I dont want you to turn down a job you really wanted just because I dont want to leave Newenham.

  “A queen, he said, kneeing her legs apart and coming into her. “Now that would be juuuust right. He kissed her thoroughly.

  She looked up at him, tears in her eyes. “Are you sure? Are you very, very sure?

  “I am very, very sure.

  Her nose ran when she cried. It was very, very unattractive, and he waited while she fumbled a Kleenex off the nightstand and blew. It was very, very unromantic.

  “Liam?

  “What?

  “Will you marry me?

  His eyes widened. He smiled, a long, slow, sweet smile.

  “I thought youd never ask.

  She called Gary the next day before her first flight. “Gary? Its Wy.

  His voice warmed. “Hey, girl.

  “Jo sent you home, huh?

  “Yeah, she said it would be best. He paused. “And it was. Wasnt it?

  “It was. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Youre part of my college days, Gary. Youre part of my youth. Ill always care. Ill see you at

  “Dont, he said, and hung up.

  “Thanksgiving at your folks house, she said to a dial tone. She replaced the phone gently in its cradle. Shed hurt him, and she knew it, but her future was here.

  With Liam, and Tim, and Bill, and Moses. She smiled.

  Moses was sitting on a stool at Bills. Bill was nowhere to be found. “Arraigning Eric, Moses said.

  “Im sorry, uncle, she said. “I know he was a friend of yours.

  “This one I never saw coming, he said, and tossed off the rest of his beer. “Who says theres no god?

  “Come to dinner tonight. Bring Bill.

  “Im sorry, he said suddenly.

  “Why? What for?

  “For being your grandfather. For making you who you are. Im sorry as hell. A man like me has no business scattering his seed around.

  She was hurt, though she tried not to show it. “Come to dinner tonight. You and Bill. A family dinner.

  His face was creased with weariness, and for the first time in her eyes he was showing his age. His smile, when it came, was lacking its usual malice. “You sure you dont want to keep your distance?

  “Im sure. She sounded surer than she felt, but he was her grandfather, hed owned up to it at last, and she wasnt going to let him draw back. She might not have that much time left to learn from him.

  “Im good for a while yet, he said, and laughed his rich, knowing laugh when he saw the expression on her face.

  They went back up to the crash site two days later, after the snow stopped falling, to watch Charles crew pick at the remains. There was an open fracture of the tibia before the morning was out, and in the first fifteen minutes after lunch a dislocated shoulder and a near miss with a calving chunk of ice. The crew chief flatly refused to put his men back to work after that. His men were in complete agreement.

  “I could probably court-martial the lot of you, Charles said.

  “You probably could, sir, the man agreed. “But at least wed all still be alive while we were locked up in the brig.

  Charles sighed. “Pack up your gear and head back to base.

  Liam, listening in the background, stepped forward when the men moved off, carrying a stretcher. “So well never know who the spy was, or if there even was one. Or who was carrying the gold, or why.

  “Short of a written confession discovered under a rock up on that glacier, miraculously intact after all these years, no.

  “The general wont be pleased.

  Charles removed the aviators cap that looked so well on his head and smoothed down his hair with the same hand. “Ah, hell. Fuck him if he cant take a j
oke.

  They laughed together.

  Wy, picking her way over a fractured slab of ice, which was now covered with a foot of snow, heard the sound and smiled to herself. Campbell pere et fils seemed to be getting along better. Good.

  Something prickled at the base of her neck and she shivered. The temperature was dropping, or so it seemed. Her feet carried her forward, a little too close to the face of the glacier for Liams comfort. “Wy, dont get so close to that damn thing!

  She didnt hear him, the prickling at the base of her neck driving her on. She waded through snow to another slab of ice and peered into a dark blue hollow.

  “Wy! Liam was coming up behind her. “Wy, come on, get back.

  He stopped beside her. “What are you looking at? When she didnt reply, he bent over and looked. “Whats that?

  He reached inside the hollow. It was narrow and very deep, and he had to stretch to find anything. It was a tight fit, too tight. He stood up and pulled his arm out of his parka and reached inside the hollow again. This time his hands closed over it, a book, short and wide, maroon in color and embossed with very faint gold letters. The flash of the letters was what he had seen, winking up at him from inside the hollow.

  “The Standard Pilot Logbook, he read out loud.

  He opened it up carefully, afraid it would fall apart in his hands. The pages were damp but the writing on them was still legible. “Sgt. Obadiah Etheridge, pilot navigator, U.S. Army Air Corps, he read, followed by a serial number and an address in Birmingham, Alabama.

  He turned the page.

  Thanksgiving, 1941

  Turkey and stuffing in the mess. It was awful. The cook runs a laundry in Memphis Tennessee in civilian life. He says he told them that when he signed up and doesnt know how he got assigned to be a cook. Typical army situation normal all fucked up.